Outside Onsite Robot TeamBuilding at Applied Materials
An outside onsite robot teambuilding at Applied Materials in Santa Clara was a huge success! Four teams competed to build Robot Build and Battle 2 robots.
The venue was outside in a shaded area that included metal tables and a basketball/tennis court nearby. Originally we planned on battling on the basketball court, but it happened to be one of the hottest days in recent bay area history at over 94 degrees. Therefore, we opted to adapt and change the battle area to the shade, which felt much better, and was about 20 degrees cooler!
The building went well with all four teams completing the robot in under 60 minutes, and the winning team posting an impressive sub-50 time of 48:48 (forty eight minutes and 48 seconds) placing them 13th all-time!
The battles were exceptionally vigorous, with the outdoor concrete surface serving as an excellent medium for battling. The scores were kept with unrivaled accuracy by our hosts, detailing six rounds of combat. Five rounds were points based combat, and then we ended, as always, with a last bot standing finale.
Each team scored significant points with Team 4 managing to win 3 rounds, and ultimately the championship. I can’t remember an event with as many flipped robots in sometime. I am not sure if it was the surface, the quality of the robot builds, which were excellent, the aggressive driving, or all three factors that led to a spectacular array of robot combat rounds.
The event was at the Applied Materials campus in Santa Clara where they make world class silicon wafer manufacturing machines. They use robots to transport wafers between manufacturing stations similar to what a conveyor belt does in larger manufacturing environments, and they use robots within the manufacturing process itself, so they definitely had some prior expertise with robotics.
A huge thank you to Applied Materials for inviting us to work with talented robotics folks at a World Class campus!
